By ED BARK@unclebarkycomPaced as always by NCIS, CBS towered over Tuesday's prime-time ratings.

NCIS blew past the half-million mark with 564,504 D-FW viewers at 7 p.m., followed by more domination from NCIS: Los Angeles (475,010) and Las Vegas (378,631). Each of the crime hours had well over twice as many viewers as the nearest competitor.

That included ABC's second episode of The Taste, which had 117,031 viewers in the 7 p.m. hour. Among the Big Four broadcast networks, it narrowly outpointed only a 7:30 p.m. episode of Fox's Raising Hope (103,263 viewers).

Fox's 8 p.m. new episode of New Girl kept CBS from a sweep of advertiser-prized 18-to-49-year-olds. It had 114,818 viewers in this key demographic opposite the first half-hour of NCIS: Los Angeles (105,250).

CW33's comedy-juiced Nightcap ("a different kind of news") had a far rougher go of it in the 9 p.m. hour. Coming off a lead-in of 48,189 total viewers from the CW network's Emily Owens, M.D., it cliff-dove to 2,754 viewers. And just 1,276 of them were in the 18-to-49 motherlode after Emily Owens provided 22,326. Um, that's not good.

In the local news derby results, CBS11 dominated at 10 p.m. in total viewers but WFAA8 edged into first place with 25-to-54-year-olds, the main advertiser target audience for news programming.

Fox4 maintained its month-long 6 a.m. winning streak with two more firsts while adding 5 and 6 p.m. golds in the 25-to-54 demographic.